The 20th century was marked by the triumph of man in the air and the conquest of the deepest depressions of the World Ocean. Only the dream of penetrating the heart of our planet and knowing the hitherto hidden life of its bowels still remains unattainable. “Journey to the Center of the Earth” promises to be extremely difficult and exciting, fraught with a lot of surprises and incredible discoveries. The first steps on this path have already been taken - several dozen superdeep wells have been drilled in the world. The information obtained with the help of ultra-deep drilling turned out to be so overwhelming that it shattered the established ideas of geologists about the structure of our planet and provided richest materials for researchers in various fields of knowledge.
Touch the mantle
The industrious Chinese in the 13th century dug wells 1,200 meters deep. Europeans broke the Chinese record in 1930 by learning how to pierce the earth with drilling rigs for 3 kilometers. In the late 1950s, the wells were extended up to 7 kilometers. The era of ultra-deep drilling began.
Like most global projects, the idea of drilling the Earth's upper shell originated in the 1960s, at the height of space flights and the belief in the limitless possibilities of science and technology. The Americans conceived no less than go through the entire earth's crust with a well and get samples of the rocks of the upper mantle. The concepts of the mantle then (as, by the way, now) were based only on indirect data - the velocity of propagation of seismic waves in the depths, the change in which was interpreted as the boundary of layers of rocks of different ages and compositions. Scientists believed that the earth's crust is like a sandwich: young rocks on top, ancient ones below. However, only superdeep drilling could give an accurate picture of the structure and composition of the Earth's outer shell and upper mantle.
Mokhol project
In 1958, the Mohol superdeep drilling program appeared in the United States. This is one of the most daring and mysterious projects in post-war America. Like many other programs, Mohol was designed to overtake the USSR in scientific rivalry, setting a world record in ultradeep drilling. The name of the project comes from the words "Mohorovicic" - this is the surname of the Croatian scientist who distinguished the interface between the earth's crust and the mantle - the border of Moho, and "hole", which means "well" in English. The creators of the program decided to drill in the ocean, where, according to geophysicists, the earth's crust is much thinner than on the continents. It was necessary to lower the pipes several kilometers into the water, traverse 5 kilometers of the ocean floor and reach the upper mantle.
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In April 1961, off the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean Sea, where the water column reaches 3.5 km, geologists drilled five wells, the deepest of which entered the bottom at 183 meters. According to preliminary calculations, in this place, under the sedimentary rocks, they expected to meet the upper layer of the earth's crust - granite. But the core raised from under the sediments contained pure basalts - a kind of antipode of granites. The result of drilling discouraged and at the same time inspired scientists, they began to prepare a new phase of drilling. But when the cost of the project exceeded $ 100 million, the US Congress stopped funding. Mohol did not answer any of the questions posed, but it showed the main thing - superdeep drilling in the ocean is possible.
The funeral is postponed
Ultra-deep drilling allowed to look into the bowels and understand how rocks behave at high pressures and temperatures. The idea that rocks with depth become denser and their porosity decreases, turned out to be incorrect, as well as the point of view about dry subsoil. This was first discovered during the drilling of the Kola superdeep, other wells in ancient crystalline strata confirmed the fact that at a depth of many kilometers, rocks are broken by cracks and penetrated by numerous pores, and water solutions freely move under pressure of several hundred atmospheres. This discovery is one of the most important achievements of ultra-deep drilling. It forced us to turn again to the problem of the disposal of radioactive waste, which was supposed to be placed in deep wells, which seemed completely safe. Taking into account the information on the state of the subsoil obtained in the course of superdeep drilling, projects to create such repositories now look very risky.
In search of the cooled hell
Since then, the world has fallen ill with ultra-deep drilling. In the United States, a new program for studying the ocean floor (Deep Sea Drilling Project) was being prepared. The Glomar Challenger, built specifically for this project, spent several years in the waters of various oceans and seas, drilling almost 800 wells in their bottom, reaching a maximum depth of 760 m. By the mid-1980s, offshore drilling results confirmed the theory of plate tectonics. Geology as a science was reborn. Meanwhile, Russia went its own way. The interest in the problem, aroused by the successes of the United States, resulted in the program "Exploration of the Earth's interior and superdeep drilling", but not in the ocean, but on the continent. Despite its centuries-old history, continental drilling was a completely new business. After all, we were talking about previously unattainable depths - more than 7 kilometers. In 1962 Nikita Khrushchev approved this program,although he was guided by political rather than scientific motives. He did not want to lag behind the United States.
The newly created laboratory at the Institute of Drilling Technology was headed by the famous oil worker, Doctor of Technical Sciences Nikolai Timofeev. He was instructed to substantiate the possibility of ultra-deep drilling in crystalline rocks - granites and gneisses. The research took 4 years, and in 1966 the experts passed the verdict - you can drill, and not necessarily with the equipment of tomorrow, the equipment that already exists is enough. The main problem is the heat at depth. According to calculations, as it penetrates into the rocks that make up the earth's crust, the temperature should increase every 33 meters by 1 degree. This means that at a depth of 10 km one should expect about 300 ° С, and at 15 km - almost 500 ° С. Drilling tools and devices will not withstand such heating. It was necessary to look for a place where the bowels are not so hot …
Such a place was found - an ancient crystalline shield of the Kola Peninsula. The report, prepared at the Institute of Physics of the Earth, read: over the billions of years of its existence, the Kola shield has cooled down, the temperature at a depth of 15 km does not exceed 150 ° C. Geophysicists prepared an approximate section of the Kola Peninsula. According to them, the first 7 kilometers are granite strata of the upper part of the earth's crust, then the basalt layer begins. Then the idea of a two-layer structure of the earth's crust was generally accepted. But as it turned out later, both physicists and geophysicists were wrong. The site for the drilling was chosen at the northern end of the Kola Peninsula near Lake Vilgiskoddeoayvinjärvi. In Finnish it means "Under the Wolf's Mountain", although there are no mountains or wolves in that place. Drilling of the well, the design depth of which was 15 kilometers, began in May 1970.
Disappointing Swedes
In the late 1980s, a well was drilled to a depth of 6.8 km in Sweden in search of natural gas of non-biological origin. Geologists decided to test the hypothesis that oil and gas are formed not from dead plants, as most scientists believe, but through mantle fluids - hot mixtures of gases and liquids. Fluids saturated with hydrocarbons seep from the mantle into the earth's crust and accumulate in large quantities. In those years, the idea of the origin of hydrocarbons not from the organic matter of sedimentary strata, but through deep fluids was a novelty, many wanted to test it. It follows from this idea that hydrocarbon reserves can contain not only sedimentary, but also volcanic and metamorphic rocks. This is why Sweden, mostly located on an ancient crystalline shield, set out to experiment.
Silyan Ring crater 52 km in diameter was chosen for drilling. According to geophysical data, at a depth of 500-600 meters, there were calcified granites - a possible seal for the underlying hydrocarbon reservoir. Measurements of the acceleration of gravity, by the change in which one can judge the composition and density of the rocks lying in the bowels, indicated the presence of highly porous rocks at a depth of 5 km - a possible reservoir of oil and gas. The drilling results disappointed scientists and investors, who invested $ 60 million in this work. The strata traversed did not contain commercial reserves of hydrocarbons, only oil and gas manifestations of clearly biological origin from ancient bitumen. In any case, no one has been able to prove the opposite.
Tool for the underworld
The drilling of the Kola well SG-3 did not require the creation of fundamentally new devices and giant machines. We began to work with what we already had: the Uralmash 4E unit with a lifting capacity of 200 tons and light-alloy pipes. What was really needed at that time was non-standard technological solutions. Indeed, no one drilled in hard crystalline rocks to such a great depth, and what would happen there, they imagined only in general terms. Experienced drillers, however, realized that no matter how detailed the project was, a real well would be much more complex. Five years later, when the depth of the SG-3 well exceeded 7 kilometers, a new Uralmash 15,000 drilling rig was installed - one of the most modern at that time. Powerful, reliable, with an automatic trigger mechanism, it could withstand a string of pipes up to 15 km long. The drilling rig has turned into a fully sheathed derrick 68 m high, defiant to strong winds raging in the Arctic. A mini-plant, scientific laboratories and a core storage have grown nearby.
When drilling to shallow depths, a motor that rotates the pipe string with a drill at the end is installed on the surface. A drill is an iron cylinder with diamond or hard alloy teeth - a bit. This crown bites into the rocks and cuts out a thin column from them - a core. To cool the tool and extract small debris from the well, drilling mud is pumped into it - liquid clay, which circulates all the time along the wellbore, like blood in vessels. After some time, the pipes are raised to the surface, freed from the core, the crown is changed and the column is again lowered into the bottomhole. This is how conventional drilling works.
And if the barrel length is 10-12 kilometers with a diameter of 215 millimeters? The string of pipes becomes the thinnest thread that is lowered into the well. How to manage it? How to see what's going on in the face? Therefore, on the Kola well, at the bottom of the drill string, miniature turbines were installed, they were started by drilling mud pumped through pipes under pressure. Turbines rotated a carbide bit and core cut. The whole technology was well developed, the operator on the control panel saw the rotation of the bit, knew its speed and could control the process.
Every 8-10 meters, a multi-kilometer pipe string had to be lifted up. Descent and ascent took a total of 18 hours.
Diamond dreams of the Volga region
When small diamonds were found in the Nizhny Novgorod region, it puzzled geologists a lot. Of course, it was easiest to assume that the precious stones were brought by a glacier or river waters from somewhere in the north. But what if the local bowels hide a kimberlite pipe - a reservoir of diamonds? They decided to test this hypothesis in the late 1980s, when the scientific drilling program in Russia was gaining momentum. The location for drilling was chosen north of Nizhny Novgorod, in the center of a giant ring structure, which stands out well in the relief. Some considered it a meteorite crater, others - an explosion tube or a volcanic vent. Drilling was stopped when the Vorotilovskaya well reached a depth of 5,374 m, of which more than a kilometer fell on crystalline basement rocks. Kimberlites were not found there, but in fairness it should be saidthat the dispute about the origin of this structure was not put to an end either. The facts obtained from the depths were equally suitable for the supporters of both hypotheses, in the end, each remained unconvinced. And the well was turned into a deep geolaboratory, which is still in operation.
Cunning of the number "7"
7 kilometers - the mark for the Kola superdeep fatal. Behind it began unknown, many accidents and a continuous struggle with rocks. The barrel could not be kept upright. When we covered 12 km for the first time, the well deviated from vertical by 21 °. Although the drillers had already learned to work with incredible borehole curvature, it was impossible to go further. The well was to be drilled from the 7 km mark. To get a vertical hole in hard rocks, you need a very hard bottom of the drill string so that it goes into the bowels like oil. But another problem arises - the well is gradually expanding, the drill dangles in it, as in a glass, the walls of the wellbore begin to collapse and can press down on the tool. The solution to this problem turned out to be original - the pendulum technology was applied. The drill was artificially rocked in the well and suppressed strong vibrations. Due to this, the trunk was vertical.
The most common accident on any rig is a pipe string break. Usually, they try to capture the pipes again, but if this happens at great depths, then the problem becomes unrecoverable. It is useless to look for a tool in a 10-kilometer borehole, they threw such a hole and started a new one, a little higher. Pipe breakage and loss at SG-3 happened many times. As a result, in its lower part, the well looks like the root system of a giant plant. The branching of the well upset the drillers, but turned out to be happiness for the geologists, who unexpectedly got a three-dimensional picture of an impressive segment of ancient Archean rocks that formed more than 2.5 billion years ago.
In June 1990, SG-3 reached a depth of 12,262 m. The well began to be prepared for drilling up to 14 km, and then an accident occurred again - at an elevation of 8,550 m, the pipe string broke off. The continuation of the work required a long preparation, renewal of equipment and new costs. In 1994, the drilling of the Kola Superdeep was stopped. After 3 years, she got into the Guinness Book of Records and still remains unsurpassed. Now the well is a laboratory for the study of deep bowels.
Secret bowels
SG-3 has been a secret facility from the very beginning. The border zone, the strategic deposits in the district, and the scientific priority are to blame. The first foreigner to visit the drilling site was one of the leaders of the Academy of Sciences of Czechoslovakia. Later, in 1975, an article about the Kola Superdeep was published in Pravda signed by the Minister of Geology Alexander Sidorenko. There were still no scientific publications on the Kola well, but some information leaked abroad. According to rumors, the world began to learn more - the deepest well is being drilled in the USSR.
A veil of secrecy would probably have hung over the well until the "perestroika", if the World Geological Congress had not happened in 1984 in Moscow. They carefully prepared for such a major event in the scientific world; a new building was even built for the Ministry of Geology - many participants were expecting. But foreign colleagues were primarily interested in the Kola superdeep! The Americans did not believe at all that we had it. The depth of the well by that time had reached 12,066 meters. It no longer made sense to hide the object. An exhibition of achievements of Russian geology awaited the congress participants in Moscow, one of the stands was dedicated to the SG-3 well. Experts all over the world gazed in bewilderment at a conventional drill head with worn carbide teeth. And with this they are drilling the deepest well in the world? Incredible!A large delegation of geologists and journalists went to the Zapolyarny settlement. Visitors were shown the rig in action, and 33-meter pipe sections were removed and disconnected. Piles of exactly the same drill heads as the one that lay on the stand in Moscow towered around.
From the Academy of Sciences, the delegation was received by the famous geologist, academician Vladimir Belousov. During a press conference, he was asked a question from the audience:
- What did the Kola well show most importantly?
- Gentlemen! Most importantly, it showed that we do not know anything about the continental crust, - the scientist answered honestly.
Deep surprise
Of course, they knew something about the earth's crust of the continents. The fact that the continents are composed of very ancient rocks, from 1.5 to 3 billion years old, was not refuted even by the Kola well. However, the geological section compiled on the basis of the SG-3 core turned out to be exactly the opposite of what scientists had imagined earlier. The first 7 kilometers were composed of volcanic and sedimentary rocks: tuffs, basalts, breccias, sandstones, dolomites. Deeper lay the so-called Conrad section, after which the speed of seismic waves in the rocks sharply increased, which was interpreted as the boundary between granites and basalts. This section was passed a long time ago, but the basalts of the lower layer of the earth's crust never appeared anywhere. On the contrary, granites and gneisses began.
The section of the Kola well refuted the two-layer model of the earth's crust and showed that the seismic sections in the bowels are not the boundaries of layers of rocks of different composition. Rather, they indicate a change in the properties of the stone with depth. At high pressure and temperature, the properties of rocks, apparently, can change dramatically, so that granites in their physical characteristics become similar to basalts, and vice versa. But the "basalt" raised to the surface from a 12-kilometer depth immediately became granite, although it experienced a severe attack of "caisson disease" along the way - the core crumbled and disintegrated into flat plaques. The further the well went, the less quality samples fell into the hands of scientists.
The depth contained many surprises. It used to be natural to think that with increasing distance from the earth's surface, with increasing pressure, the rocks become more monolithic, with a small number of cracks and pores. SG-3 convinced scientists otherwise. Starting from 9 kilometers, the strata turned out to be very porous and literally crammed with cracks through which aqueous solutions circulated. Later, this fact was confirmed by other superdeep wells on the continents. It turned out to be much hotter at depth than expected: by as much as 80 °! At the 7 km mark, the bottomhole temperature was 120 ° С, at 12 km it reached 230 ° С. In the samples of the Kola well, scientists have discovered gold mineralization. Inclusions of precious metal were found in ancient rocks at a depth of 9.5-10.5 km. However, the concentration of gold was too low to declare a deposit - an average of 37.7 mg per ton of rock,but enough to be expected in other similar places.
The warmth of the home planet
The high temperatures encountered by drillers underground have prompted scientists to use this almost inexhaustible source of energy. For example, in young mountains (such as the Caucasus, Alps, Pamir) at a depth of 4 kilometers, the subsoil temperature will reach 200 ° C. This natural battery can be made to work for you. It is necessary to drill two deep wells side by side and connect them with horizontal drifts. Then pump water into one well, and extract hot steam from the other, which will be used to heat the city or obtain another type of energy. Corrosive gases and fluids, which are common in seismically active regions, can pose a serious problem for such enterprises. In 1988, the Americans had to complete the drilling of a well on the shelf of the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Alabama, reaching a depth of 7,399 m.reaching 232 ° С, very high pressure and emissions of acid gases. In areas where there are deposits of hot groundwater, you can extract them directly from wells from fairly deep horizons. Such projects are suitable for the regions of the Caucasus, Pamir, and the Far East. However, the high cost of the work limits the mining depth to four kilometers.
On the Russian trail
The demonstration of the Kola well in 1984 made a deep impression on the world community. Many countries have started to prepare scientific drilling projects on the continents. Such a program was also approved in Germany in the late 1980s. The ultra-deep well KTB Hauptborung was drilled from 1990 to 1994, according to the plan, it was supposed to reach a depth of 12 km, but due to unpredictable high temperatures, it was only possible to get to the 9.1 km mark. Due to the openness of data on drilling and scientific work, good technology and documentation, the KTV ultra-deep well remains one of the most famous in the world.
The location for drilling this well was chosen in the southeast of Bavaria, on the remains of an ancient mountain range, whose age is estimated at 300 million years. Geologists believed that somewhere here there is a zone of junction of two plates that were once the shores of the ocean. According to scientists, over time, the upper part of the mountains has worn away, exposing the remains of the ancient oceanic crust. Even deeper, ten kilometers from the surface, geophysicists discovered a large body with abnormally high electrical conductivity. They also hoped to clarify its nature with the help of a well. But the main challenge was to reach a depth of 10 km in order to gain experience in ultra-deep drilling. Having studied the materials of the Kola SG-3, the German drillers decided to first drill a test well 4 km deep in order to get a more accurate idea of the working conditions in the subsoil, test the equipment and take a core. At the end of the pilot work, much of the drilling and scientific equipment had to be altered, some of which had to be re-created.
The main - superdeep - well KTV Hauptborung was laid just two hundred meters from the first. For the work, an 83-meter tower was erected and the most powerful drilling rig at that time with a lifting capacity of 800 tons was built. Many drilling operations have been automated, primarily the mechanism for lowering and recovering the pipe string. The self-guided vertical drilling system made it possible to make an almost vertical hole. Theoretically, with such equipment it was possible to drill to a depth of 12 kilometers. But the reality, as always, turned out to be more complicated, and the scientists' plans did not come true.
The problems at the KTV well began after a depth of 7 km, repeating much of the fate of the Kola Superdeep. At first, it is believed due to the high temperature, the vertical drilling system broke down and the hole went obliquely. At the end of the work, the bottom deviated from the vertical by 300 m. Then, more complicated accidents began - a break in the drill string. Just like on Kola, new shafts had to be drilled. Certain difficulties were caused by the narrowing of the well - at the top its diameter was 71 cm, at the bottom - 16.5 cm. Endless accidents and high bottomhole temperature –270 ° С forced the drillers to stop working not far from the cherished goal.
It cannot be said that the scientific results of KTV Hauptborung struck the imagination of scientists. At the depth, mainly amphibolites and gneisses - ancient metamorphic rocks - occurred. The zone of convergence of the ocean and the remains of the oceanic crust have not been found anywhere. Perhaps they are in another place, here is a small crystalline massif, upturned to a height of 10 km. A deposit of graphite was discovered a kilometer from the surface.
In 1996, the KTV well, which cost the German budget 338 million dollars, came under the patronage of the Scientific Center for Geology in Potsdam, it was turned into a laboratory for observing deep subsoil and a tourist destination.
Why isn't the moon made of cast iron?
"Because there would not be enough iron for the moon" - probably, this is how opponents of the hypothesis, according to which the moon broke away from the Earth, could answer its supporters. This hypothesis, however, did not arise from scratch, and scientists are considering several areas of the Earth, from where a piece of a planet the size of the Moon could be knocked out. The Kola well proposed its own version. In the 1970s, Soviet stations delivered several hundred grams of lunar soil to Earth. The substance was shared by the leading scientific centers of the country in order to conduct independent analyzes. The Kola Scientific Center also got a tiny sample. Scientists from all over the region came to look at the curiosity, including employees of the well, which later became the deepest in the world. Is it a joke? Touch unearthly dust, look at it through a microscope. Later, experts investigated the lunar soil and published a monograph on this subject. By that time, the well in Zapolyarnoye had reached a decent depth, the rocks raised from the borehole were described in detail. And what? The lunar soil samples, which drillers once gazed at with awe, turned out to be diabases one to one from their well, from a depth of 3 km. Immediately a hypothesis arose that the Moon did not break away otherwise than from the Kola Peninsula about 1.5 billion years ago - this is the age of the diabases. Although the question involuntarily arose - what size was this peninsula then?.. Immediately a hypothesis arose that the Moon did not break away otherwise than from the Kola Peninsula about 1.5 billion years ago - this is the age of the diabases. Although the question involuntarily arose - what size was this peninsula then?.. Immediately a hypothesis arose that the Moon did not break away otherwise than from the Kola Peninsula about 1.5 billion years ago - this is the age of the diabases. Although the question involuntarily arose - what size was this peninsula then?..
To drill or not to drill?
The record of the Kola well is still unsurpassed, although 14 and even 15 km deep into the Earth can certainly be covered. However, such a single effort is unlikely to provide fundamentally new knowledge about the earth's crust, while superdeep drilling is very expensive. The days when a variety of hypotheses were tested with its help are long gone. Wells deeper than 6-7 km have almost ceased to be drilled for purely scientific purposes. For example, in Russia there are only two objects of this kind - the Ural SG-4 and the En-Yakhinskaya well in Western Siberia. They are run by the state enterprise Nedra Scientific and Production Center, located in Yaroslavl. There are so many superdeep and deep wells drilled in the world that scientists do not have time to analyze the information. In recent years, geologists have sought to study and generalize facts obtained from great depths. Having learned to drill to great depths,people now want to better master the horizon available to them, to concentrate their efforts on practical tasks that will be useful now. So in Russia, having completed a scientific drilling program, having drilled all 12 planned superdeep wells, they are now working on a system for the entire state, in which geophysical data obtained by "scanning" the subsoil with seismic waves will be linked with information obtained by superdeep drilling. Without boreholes, sections of the earth's crust built by geophysicists are just models. For specific rocks to appear on these diagrams, drilling data is needed. Then geophysicists, whose work is much cheaper than drilling and cover a large area, will be able to predict mineral deposits much more accurately.to concentrate efforts on practical tasks that will benefit now. So in Russia, having completed the scientific drilling program, having drilled all 12 planned superdeep wells, they are now working on a system for the entire state, in which geophysical data obtained by "scanning" the subsoil with seismic waves will be linked with information obtained by superdeep drilling. Without boreholes, sections of the earth's crust built by geophysicists are just models. For specific rocks to appear on these diagrams, drilling data is needed. Then geophysicists, whose work is much cheaper than drilling and cover a large area, will be able to predict mineral deposits much more accurately.to concentrate efforts on practical tasks that will benefit now. So in Russia, having completed the scientific drilling program, having drilled all 12 planned superdeep wells, they are now working on a system for the entire state, in which geophysical data obtained by "scanning" the subsoil with seismic waves will be linked with information obtained by superdeep drilling. Without boreholes, geophysicists' crustal sections are just models. For specific rocks to appear on these diagrams, drilling data is needed. Then geophysicists, whose work is much cheaper than drilling and cover a large area, will be able to predict mineral deposits much more accurately. Having drilled all 12 planned ultra-deep wells, they are now working on a system for the entire state, in which geophysical data obtained by "scanning" the subsoil with seismic waves will be linked with information obtained by ultra-deep drilling. Without boreholes, the crustal sections built by geophysicists are just models. For specific rocks to appear on these diagrams, drilling data is needed. Then geophysicists, whose work is much cheaper than drilling and cover a large area, will be able to predict mineral deposits much more accurately. Having drilled all 12 planned ultra-deep wells, they are now working on a system for the entire state, in which geophysical data obtained by "scanning" the subsoil with seismic waves will be linked with information obtained by ultra-deep drilling. Without boreholes, geophysicists' crustal sections are just models. For specific rocks to appear on these diagrams, drilling data is needed. Then geophysicists, whose work is much cheaper than drilling and cover a large area, will be able to predict mineral deposits much more accurately.built by geophysicists are just models. For specific rocks to appear on these diagrams, drilling data is needed. Then geophysicists, whose work is much cheaper than drilling and cover a large area, will be able to predict mineral deposits much more accurately.built by geophysicists are just models. For specific rocks to appear on these diagrams, drilling data is needed. Then geophysicists, whose work is much cheaper than drilling and cover a large area, will be able to predict mineral deposits much more accurately.
In the United States, they continue to engage in a program of deep drilling of the ocean floor and conduct several interesting projects in the zones of volcanic and tectonic activity of the earth's crust. For example, in the Hawaiian Islands, researchers hoped to study the underground life of the volcano and get closer to the mantle tongue - the plume, which is believed to have given birth to these islands. The well at the foot of the Mauna Kea volcano was planned to be drilled to a depth of 4.5 km, but due to extreme temperatures, only 3 km were able to be mastered. Another project is a deep observatory on the San Andreas Fault. Drilling of the well through this largest fault in the North American continent began in June 2004 and covered 2 of the planned 3 kilometers. In the deep laboratory, they intend to study the origin of earthquakes, which, perhaps, will allow a better understanding of the nature of these natural disasters and make their predictions.
Despite the fact that modern ultra-deep drilling programs are no longer as ambitious as before, they clearly have a great future. The day is not far off when the turn of great depths will come - they will search and discover new deposits of minerals. Already, oil and gas production in the United States from depths of 6-7 km is becoming commonplace. In the future, Russia will also have to pump hydrocarbons from such levels. As shown by the Tyumen superdeep well, 7 kilometers from the surface there are sedimentary strata promising for gas deposits.
Superdeep drilling is not without reason compared to space exploration. Such programs, on a global scale, absorbing all the best that mankind has at the moment, give impetus to the development of many industries, technology and ultimately prepare the ground for a new breakthrough in science.
Devilish machinations
Once the Kola Superdeep was at the center of a global scandal. One fine morning in 1989, the director of the well, David Guberman, received a call from the editor-in-chief of the regional newspaper, the secretary of the regional committee, and a host of different people. Everyone wanted to know about the devil, whom the drillers allegedly raised from the depths, as reported by several newspapers and radio stations around the world. The director was taken aback, and - from what! “Scientists have discovered hell,” “Satan escaped from hell,” read the headlines. As reported in the press, geologists working very far away in Siberia, and maybe in Alaska or even the Kola Peninsula (there was no consensus among the journalists on this), were drilling at a depth of 14.4 km, when suddenly the drill began to hang loose from side to side. So, there is a big hole below, scientists thought, apparently the center of the planet is empty. Sensors lowered into the depthsshowed a temperature of 2000 ° C, and supersensitive microphones sounded … the cries of millions of suffering souls. As a result, drilling was stopped for fear of releasing hellish forces to the surface. Of course, Soviet scholars refuted this journalistic "duck", but the echoes of that old history wandered from newspaper to newspaper for a long time, turning into a kind of folklore. A few years later, when the tales of hell were already forgotten, the staff of the Kola Superdeep visited Australia with lectures. They were invited to a reception with the Governor of Victoria, a flirtatious lady who greeted the Russian delegation with a question: "And what the hell did you get out of there?"Soviet scholars refuted this journalistic "duck", but the echoes of that old history wandered from newspaper to newspaper for a long time, turning into a kind of folklore. A few years later, when the stories about hell were already forgotten, the staff of the Kola Superdeep visited Australia with lectures. They were invited to a reception with the Governor of Victoria, a flirtatious lady who greeted the Russian delegation with a question: "And what the hell did you get out of there?"Soviet scholars refuted this journalistic "duck", but the echoes of that old history wandered from newspaper to newspaper for a long time, turning into a kind of folklore. A few years later, when the tales of hell were already forgotten, the staff of the Kola Superdeep visited Australia with lectures. They were invited to a reception with the Governor of Victoria, a flirtatious lady who greeted the Russian delegation with a question: "And what the hell did you get out of there?"And what the hell did you get out of there?"And what the hell did you get out of there?"
The deepest wells in the world
1. Aralsor SG-1, Caspian lowland, 1962-1971, depth - 6.8 km. Search for oil and gas.
2. Biikzhal SG-2, Caspian lowland, 1962-1971, depth - 6.2 km. Search for oil and gas.
3. Kola SG-3, 1970-1994, depth - 12,262 m. Design depth - 15 km.
4. Saatlinskaya, Azerbaijan, 1977-1990, depth - 8 324 m. Design depth - 11 km.
5. Kolvinskaya, Arkhangelsk region, 1961, depth - 7,057 m.
6. Muruntau SG-10, Uzbekistan, 1984, depth -
3 km. The design depth is 7 km. Search for gold.
7. Timan-Pechora SG-5, North-East of Russia, 1984-1993, depth - 6,904 m, design depth - 7 km.
8. Tyumen SG-6, Western Siberia, 1987-1996, depth - 7,502 m. Design depth - 8 km. Search for oil and gas.
9. Novo-Elkhovskaya, Tatarstan, 1988, depth - 5,881 m.
10. Vorotylovskaya well, Volga region, 1989-1992, depth - 5,374 m. Search for diamonds, study of the Puchezh-Katunskaya astrobleme.
11. Krivoy Rog SG-8, Ukraine, 1984-1993, depth - 5 382 m. Design depth - 12 km. Search for ferruginous quartzites.
Ural SG-4, Middle Urals. Laid down in 1985. Design depth - 15,000 m. Current depth - 6,100 m. Search for copper ores, study of the structure of the Urals. En-Yakhtinskaya SG-7, Western Siberia. Design depth - 7,500 m. Current depth - 6,900 m. Oil and gas exploration.
Wells for oil and gas
early 70s
University, USA, depth - 8686 m.
Bayden Unit, USA, depth - 9,159 m.
Bertha-Rogers, USA, depth - 9,583 m.
80s
Zisterdorf, Austria, depth 8,553 m.
Silyan Ring, Sweden, depth - 6.8 km.
Bighorn, USA, Wyoming, depth - 7 583 m.
KTV Hauptbohrung, Germany, 1990-1994, depth -
9 100 m. Design depth - 10 km. Scientific drilling.
At the limits of life
At the Limits of Life Extremophilic bacteria found in rocks raised from a depth of several kilometers DOSSIER One of the most amazing discoveries that scientists have made through drilling is the existence of life deep underground. And although this life is represented only by bacteria, its limits extend to incredible depths. Bacteria are ubiquitous. They have mastered the underworld, seemingly completely unsuitable for existence. Huge pressures, high temperatures, lack of oxygen and living space - nothing could become an obstacle to the spread of life. According to some estimates, the mass of microorganisms living underground can exceed the mass of all living things that inhabit the surface of our planet.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the American scientist Edson Bustin discovered bacteria in water from an oil-bearing horizon from a depth of several hundred meters. The microorganisms that lived there did not need oxygen and sunlight, they fed on organic compounds of oil. Bastin suggested that these bacteria have lived in isolation from the surface for 300 million years - since the formation of the oil field. But his bold hypothesis remained unclaimed, they simply did not believe in it. Then it was believed that life is just a thin film on the surface of the planet.
Interest in deep life forms can be quite practical. In the 1980s, the US Department of Energy was looking for safe methods for the disposal of radioactive waste. For these purposes, it was supposed to use mines in impermeable rocks, where bacteria feeding on radionuclides live. In 1987, deep drilling of several wells began in South Carolina. From half a kilometer deep, scientists took samples, observing all possible precautions so as not to bring bacteria and air from the surface of the Earth. Several independent laboratories were studying the samples, their results were positive: so-called anaerobic bacteria lived in deep strata, which did not need oxygen.
The bacteria were also found in the rocks of a gold mine in South Africa at a depth of 2.8 km, where the temperature was 60 ° C. They also live deep under the oceans at temperatures above 100 °. As the Kola Superdeep Borehole showed, there are conditions for microorganisms to live even at a depth of more than 12 km, since the rocks turned out to be rather porous, saturated with aqueous solutions, and where there is water, life is possible.
Microbiologists also found colonies of bacteria in a superdeep borehole that opened the Silyan Ring crater in Sweden. It is curious that microorganisms lived in ancient granites. Although these were very dense, under high pressure rocks, groundwater circulated in them through a system of micropores and cracks. The layer of rocks at a depth of 5.5-6.7 km became a real sensation. It was saturated with a paste of oil with magnetite crystals. One of the possible explanations for this phenomenon was given by the American geologist Thomas Gold, author of the book "The Deep Hot Biosphere". Gold suggested that the magnetite-oil paste is nothing more than a waste product of bacteria that feed on methane coming from the mantle.
Studies show that bacteria are content with truly Spartan conditions. The limits of their endurance remain a mystery, but it seems that the lower limit of the habitat of bacteria is still set by the temperature of the interior. They can multiply at 110 ° C and withstand temperatures of 140 ° C, albeit for a short time. If we assume that the temperature on the continents increases by 20-25 ° with each kilometer, then living communities can be found up to a depth of 4 km. Under the ocean floor, the temperature does not rise so quickly, and the lower limit of life can lie at a depth of 7 km.
This means that life has an enormous margin of safety. Consequently, the biosphere of the Earth cannot be completely destroyed even in the event of the most serious cataclysms, and, probably, on planets without an atmosphere and hydrosphere, microorganisms may well exist in the depths.